My Cardboard Balcony

I Find by Belinda Roddie I find a stone, and it feels cold in my palm, smoothed out by the ocean tipped with foam. I find a bone picked clean by birds that fly from crest to crest, from cliff to cliff. They roam so freely, so unhindered, and I feel just a little bit envious of them. I find letters from my mother, still sealed. I never opened them. I find a gem that's loosened from its ring. I find a cracked and empty saltshaker along the road, and it proves useless in my kitchen back home. I find quatrains and a silly ode my father wrote, and somehow, all I hold are little nothings that, like me, grow old.

"I don't sing the national anthem." "Why not?" "Because it's terrible, that's why!" Sylvester slapped down his half-empty can of beer as he finished his sentence. "And not because of the country, mind you. It's just a terrible song." "Why do you say that?" "The melody, the lyrics, the strange question at the end...I mean, if it were me, the national anthem would have a lot more death metal screaming and definitely a couple of explosions after the second verse. Because Amurrica!"

Pie-rates by Belinda Roddie Three pirates eat blackberry pie on their half-capsized ship near a furnished lanai. One sticks a sticky thumb into the crust and cries, "What a sweet little sight for my remaining sore eye!"

"I wish to remain anonymous," said the person behind the curtain. "Do you also wish for solitude?" the interviewer asked just to be certain. "To be anonymous is to live in solitude," the person said. "I'll be plenty happy when everyone else is gone so I can be alone when I'm dead." "But there are ghosts to follow you in the afterlife," the interviewer objected. "Well, in that case," said the stranger, "I ought to be the only one resurrected."

The Blue Line by Belinda Roddie When I drive away from the city, I straddle the blue line, that subtle, glowing guide across the bridge where shadows contemplate suicide. Once the Golden Gate is behind me, the blue splits into two, like long, outstretched fingers ready to catch stars before they fall. God, that sounds pretentious, and yet it's so appropriate, because San Francisco is full of poets who want to believe that falling stars are a sign of good luck, and that bridges connect us rather than divide. By the time I reach suburbia, the lines have disappeared. Some might say to me that the blue is just an illusion brought on by the grins of street lamps and a damp, dim sky, but how can I pretend that it's imaginary when it was simply too afraid to follow me home?

The little girl was folding and unfolding her napkin, putting it on her lap and then taking it off, tucking in the corners and then tugging them back out. She seemed nervous, fidgety, under the shadow of who I assumed to be her father. Her father wore boots as black as his beard, which almost tickled the belly part of his plaid shirt. He grunted over the lip of his beer and did not speak much, and all his child kept doing was contorting the napkin until it, predictably, began to tear.

I Am Ugly, And You Are Blind by Belinda Roddie You grip the white stick like an extra hand. I guide you to your favorite corner, where your favorite books sit in their solitary stack. You love the smell and the crinkling sound the pages make. The doctors say your eyesight might, just might, return in six months' time. I am happy that all the colors and textures will return to you - the sheen of fur on a fluffy dog, the brightness of ketchup on a mess of fries. But I am afraid of how your eyes will twitch when they land on my rather homely physique and expression. For now, I read to you, knowing all too well that, even when you can read without your fingers, you'll want me to do this every night, when we have our own room in our own apartment, where we can count the stars together until we get too tired to think.